Oh, and by the way, the mixing job is absolutely atrocious.
Observe the waveform analysis of Cyanide:
No dynamic range whatsoever. This is a fairly accurate view of the whole album, as well. Just one gigantic mess of clipping and distortion. Apparently, they're even rioting on the official Metallica message boards, starting an online petition for a remix/remaster of the album that doesn't suck.
Now, Metallica never really excited me. Ride The Lightning is a dang good album, no doubt, but that's all. Even so, the songs on Death Magnetic really aren't that bad, and even I want to kill Rick Rubin for this hackjob. They stuck poor Ted Jensen in front of mastering it, but even he apologized and said there was nothing he could do with the tapes he was given.
So songwriting-wise, this may be Metallica's best album in the past 20 years... but the recording process was an absolute disaster. Such a thing should not have happened to a band of their notoriety.